SpotCrime.com was launched in 2007 and aims to provide crime reports nationwide from a variety of sources, including crime maps built by law enforcement agencies and new reports, according to the company's founder, Colin Drane. The Mobile County Sheriff's Office is investigating the group to determine whether they have hacked into sensitive information stored by MCSO, said spokeswoman Lori Myles. (Courtesy of SpotCrime.com)

The website has come under fire in recent days after a
spokeswoman with MCSO said the company was under investigation for possibly
hacking into MCSO servers to gather information from their My Neighborhood crime
map.

"We have systems, such as SpotCrime, going to our site
daily and screen scrubbing (a process for gathering website information) our
system daily -- almost every hour," said MCSO spokeswoman Lori Myles.

As an example, Myles pointed to one case where the
department saw a single person hit the Who's In Jail website 4,000 times over
just two hours.

In response, the Sheriff's Office has blocked "everyone
out of our system unless we recognize the URL (they are coming from)."

The map is linked to other parts of the department's
intelligence system, Myles said, including the system used to manage the Mobile
County Metro Jail booking log.

"My Neighborhood is tied to our jail management system,
which holds private information about people such as social security numbers,
(driver's license) numbers, personal addresses and so on," Myles said.

An investigation into possible hacking was first launched
after the department was told of emailed crime notifications sent directly to
community members from SpotCrime.com. The emails said a crime had been reported
in the recipients'' area and advertised for the website, Myles said.

The Mobile County Sheriff's Office announced on Wednesday, Aug. 14, 2013, they have integrated an email notification system into their My Neighborhood crime mapping system as part of a partnership with StreetScan. (Courtesy of the Mobile County Sheriff's Office)

However, Drane said his company was only taking information
publically available through My Neighborhood. Using an automated process, the
site would gather real-time reports posted onto the MCSO crime map.

"If you're automatically pulling data that you do not
have permission to use, is that not stealing? When you take it and use that
data to solicit and get advertisers?" Myles said.

She said the move goes against a disclaimer put up by MCSO
regarding My Neighborhood, although the disclaimer on MCSO's website made no
reference to the possibility of gathering information to sell it.

"We just put the publically available information in a
map and table format," Drane said. "How is that stealing?"

He added that his company was not accessing any information from the jail management system and had no interest in gathering mug shots or similar information.

Drane said MCSO has not tried to contact SpotCrime.com, although
Myles said officials tried to call a number listed for the company, which was
disconnected.

SpotCrime.com was launched by Drane approximately seven years ago while he was living in Baltimore, Md. Drane, who is passionate about open access to public information, decided to start the company after noticing how high crime rates were in the city.